What Is Abolition Relief?
It is available to those earning income abroad – specifically in a country not covered by the exemption under Art. 21(1)(23c) of the PIT Act, with which Poland has concluded a double taxation treaty providing for the proportional credit method. The relief reduces the amount of tax payable in Poland. In 2021, abolition relief was capped at PLN 1,360.
Certain taxpayers, however, are not subject to this cap. These are individuals who perform work outside the land territory of states. Seafarers, pilots, flight attendants, and those working on drilling platforms could claim the relief without limitation in their annual returns. This means that seafarers’ foreign income is still effectively exempt from taxation in Poland, allowing them to avoid double taxation where they have already paid tax on that income abroad.
In practice, taxpayers claiming unlimited abolition relief are typically summoned to their tax offices in connection with the annual return in which the relief was applied. This may be because the tax authority is unaware that a particular taxpayer is a seafarer. It is advisable – when claiming unlimited abolition relief – to include at least a brief note regarding the source of income in the filed return, e.g. in the “Additional information” section (PIT-36 – box 524).
The position that taxpayers earning foreign income outside the land territory of states – including seafarers – are entitled to claim abolition relief in full (without the cap) was confirmed in Tax Clarifications issued by the Minister of Finance in August 2021 concerning Art. 27g of the PIT Act. The situation of seafarers was addressed in the Clarifications on two occasions:
Example 1
Mr Wojciech is a Polish tax resident working on board a seagoing vessel sailing on the Indian Ocean. The vessel on which the Taxpayer works is operated in international transport by an enterprise with its registered office in the United Kingdom. Is Mr Wojciech entitled to claim abolition relief in full (without the PLN 1,360 cap) in respect of income earned in 2021?
Yes. The Taxpayer performs salaried work outside the land territory of states. Accordingly, the tax calculated under the proportional credit method may be reduced by the full amount of abolition relief.
Example 2
Mr Jakub is a Polish tax resident. The Taxpayer is employed by an enterprise with its registered office in Norway on a drilling platform located in the North Sea, within Norway’s territorial waters. Is the Taxpayer entitled to claim abolition relief in full when calculating tax on income earned in 2021?
Yes. The Taxpayer’s place of work is outside the land territory of states. Accordingly, when settling income for 2021, the Taxpayer is entitled to deduct the full amount of abolition relief.
In summary, the Ministry of Finance Clarifications state that seafarers’ entitlement to abolition relief is not dependent on the type of unit on which the work is performed. It must, however, be clearly emphasised that the Clarifications address the condition of “work outside the land territory” (Art. 27g(5) of the PIT Act), and not the condition of “operation of the vessel in international transport” – and it is precisely the latter condition that is challenged by tax authorities and confirmed by the NSA with respect to offshore units.
The Ministry of Finance also confirmed in the Clarifications that abolition relief (without the cap) applies to seafarers working on vessels as well as other floating units, including drilling platforms.
It must be noted, however, that the analysed Ministry of Finance Clarifications, while favourable for seafarers, do not constitute a source of law in Poland and may be applied at the discretion of officials.
Abolition Relief and Seafarers on Offshore Units – the Courts’ Position
The 2021 Clarifications do not, however, resolve all doubts. In practice, what proves decisive is not the type of unit on which the seafarer works, but whether that unit is operated in international transport. The Supreme Administrative Court in its judgment of 29 January 2026 (II FSK 702/23) confirmed the established line of case law, according to which FPSO, FSO, cable-laying, pipe-laying and research vessels do not participate in international transport – and consequently, the income of seafarers employed on them does not qualify for abolition relief under the Polish-Norwegian Convention.
This means that even if a seafarer meets the condition of performing work outside the land territory (Art. 27g(5) of the PIT Act), the entitlement to unlimited abolition relief may prove moot if, at the prior stage of determining the rules of taxation, the very fact of work in international transport is challenged.
Art. 27g(5) of the PIT Act – a Common Misunderstanding
Many seafarers and their advisors treat Art. 27g(5) of the PIT Act as a standalone basis for entitlement to abolition relief – reasoning that since they work outside the land territory of states, the relief is available to them automatically and without the cap. The Regional Administrative Court in Gdańsk in its judgment of 4 February 2026 (I SA/Gd 935/25) categorically rejected this interpretation.
Art. 27g(5) does not create a standalone right to the relief – it merely removes the PLN 1,360 cap from paragraph 2. Before the question of the cap even arises, the conditions of Art. 27g(1) must first be met, and these require that the foreign income be settled under the rules of Art. 27(9) or (9a) of the PIT Act. In other words: paragraph 5 addresses “how much” – but paragraph 1 addresses “whether at all.”
The 2021 Ministry of Finance Clarifications are not inconsistent with this position – they simply do not articulate it explicitly, as they deal exclusively with the question of the cap, not the underlying entitlement to the relief.
Does Payment of Tax Abroad Condition Entitlement to the Relief?
The case law does not provide a uniform answer to this question.
The WSA in Gdańsk in its judgment of 4 February 2026 (I SA/Gd 935/25) held that the absence of a conflict of taxing claims – i.e. a situation where the taxpayer failed to demonstrate the probability of a foreign tax liability – precludes the application of a double taxation treaty and, consequently, abolition relief. In a treaty-free situation, the general tax ruling of the Minister of Finance (No. DD4.8201.1.2019) expressly requires actual payment of tax.
The NSA, however, in its judgment of 15 December 2025 (II FSK 785/22), delivered by a seven-judge panel, took a different view – holding that neither the arising of a tax liability in the other state nor actual payment of tax condition the applicability of a double taxation treaty. It is sufficient that the income “may be taxed” within the meaning of the convention. The NSA simultaneously issued a signalling order to the Minister of Finance, pointing to the divergence of positions within the tax administration.
This divergence does not affect offshore seafarers working on vessels not operated in international transport – in their case the convention does not apply for a different reason (absence of the transport condition). For seafarers on transport vessels whose income satisfies the treaty conditions, however, the judgment in II FSK 785/22 may be of significant importance.
The practical consequences of the current state of affairs are further confirmed by the WSA in Gdańsk in its judgment of 18 February 2026 (I SA/Gd 951/25), where a seafarer who relied on the exemption under Art. 21(1)(23c) was unable, at the appeal stage, to “switch” to abolition relief under Art. 27g – the court held that the application defines the scope of the proceedings.
Robert Nogacki is a Polish attorney at law (radca prawny), the founder and managing partner of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec (Skarbiec Law Firm), which has operated continuously since 2006.
The law is equal for everyone, but the parties rarely are: on one side stands an organization with time, money, and lawyers, on the other a person with one business, one nest egg, and one life.
Clients rarely come to him with a legal problem. They come with a problem that also has a legal side: an audit that began with a single invoice, money entrusted to someone who has disappeared, a company that has to be passed on before it is too late. Most such matters are decided long before the first letter is written, in decisions made without asking and in deadlines nobody remembered. So he begins by asking how the client got here, not what the client should have done.
He advises entrepreneurs and families from more than a dozen countries, including those whose accounts the tax office has just seized and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning. He defends them in tax audits, customs and fiscal inspections, disputes with the tax authorities, and criminal tax proceedings. He represents victims of investment fraud and Ponzi schemes. He helps families set up family foundations and plan succession, so that a life’s work outlasts a single generation.
Not every case can be won. Every case can be run so that the client knows where they stand. Since 2006 he has represented the victims in the WGI case (Warszawska Grupa Inwestycyjna, the Warsaw Investment Group), one of the longest criminal cases in the history of the Polish financial market, because some things must not be left half finished, even when they take two decades. In the case of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange Zonda (Zondacrypto, operated by BB Trade Estonia OÜ), he represents several hundred victims in the criminal investigation conducted by Poland’s National Prosecutor’s Office and in the Estonian bankruptcy proceedings.
Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec is listed in the rankings of Poland’s largest tax advisory firms published by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Rzeczpospolita, and it is a four-time recipient (2015 to 2018) of the European Medal awarded by the Business Centre Club and the European Economic and Social Committee. Robert Nogacki publishes regularly, in the press and on the firm’s website, for people who have a problem rather than a law degree, because a legal opinion the client cannot understand protects only the lawyer.
He believes that the best legal advice is the kind that means the client never has to appear in court.
